A Novel Semantic-Web Based Technology for Control Logic Rapid Reconfiguration of CPPS

Aiming at solving the problem that the traditional production control system cannot support rapid logical reconfiguration of CPPS, a semantic-web based technology consisting of an overall research framework and three key methods are proposed. Within this overall research framework, product process can be first matched against production resource capabilities, then transformed into the production process of production system, and finally into the control logic of production control system. All the transformations can be done automatically by the help of the proposed semantic-web based methods, namely unified ontology model and related reasoning methods, so that when product process changes, control logic of production can be adjusted efficiently, which enables rapid logical reconfiguration of CPPS. In this paper, the overall framework is first introduced with emphasis on background and technical characteristics of CPPS, analysis of research gaps and overall methods. Then, the three key methods are introduced in detail, namely the unified ontological modelling method of product-process-resources, and the rule-based reasoning methods to automatically transform the production process and control logic, are described in detail. Furthermore, concerning the shortcoming of existing Product-Process-Resource ontological modeling, the description of production system's control behavior is extended within the resource domain, so that key information related to PLC programming such as action sequence and control variable can be integrated and leveraged during the transformation of control logic. Finally, a reconfigurable CPPS prototype is developed based on the proposed framework, and the advantages of the methods are tested and verified.